How to streamline a business

“I have people’s skills. I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?” Many things are wrong.

Being good at dealing with people is not enough, that’s the minimum. Today it’s necessary to add “value” to our customers and therefore to the company we work for.

Let’s overlook all the implications of the merciless interrogation, let’s laugh about it, and let’s think about the message “core”:  the “relationship” era is over.

Who thinks they can hide with politics and “fiduciary relationships” their “intolerable uselessness” is destined to bad, very bad times. A famous TV series declaimed “Winter is coming”, in the business world it already arrived long time ago.

There’s no space for people who “move” forms from a place to another, who claim for themselves other people’s merits or who think they’re working inside their sealed environment. Here’s what’s wrong.

Communication, ability to show empathy, and therefore make processes quicker, is a quality that everybody should have: developers, technicians, computer scientists. It’s not possible to relegate relationships to few people anymore; this happens in structures lacking “confidence”. In these companies levels multiplies, so they install the controller of the controller of the controlled ones.

But this is no longer supportable. Companies are closing down also for this reason. So what do they do? They fire, thinking that in this way they could find a remedy to what they have “permitted” for years and years.

The “lean organization” becomes more and more established. It is the ability to streamline the company management to avoid wastefulness and optimize the resources. “Unfortunately”, companies are increasingly reducing this concept (which is very advanced) to the sole cuts, withouth considering a true value recapture, at every level.

“Lean organization” is a form of evolution, not of “involution”, and as always “evolving” means “simplifying” without changing the human principles. In simple terms, firing who adds value to favour who’s politically “bounded” is not supportable. Relationships are not enough anymore.

We should rather ask ourselves:

What are the few useless procedures that come between actions and results, delaying schedule?
What is the 20% of the problems that cause the 80% of our frustration?
How can we ensure that our collegues express their best value for our customers?

The answers to these questions can represent a good starting point to begin the optimization of our resources. Do you agree?